Lenovo Legion Pro 7 review: a powerful gaming laptop with Intel Core i9 and RTX 4090

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7 is a very powerful gaming laptop that can be considered a kind of replacement for a dextop. It is configured with the flagship 13th generation Intel Core i9 processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop graphics card, which makes it a great performer in games, 3D and other demanding tasks. And a good cooling system keeps all these powerful components well cooled. Among the undoubted advantages of the laptop are a high-quality 16-inch IPS screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz, a large number of connectors, including modern monitor outputs, full-size USB and RJ-45 network. The laptop keyboard has an almost standard layout and very comfortable buttons. There are some complaints about the laptop, but they are not critical. It's a little strange to find neither a fingerprint scanner nor an infrared camera for owner identification in a flagship laptop for a lot of money. A card reader would also be very useful. Among the closest competitors is the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16, which has a slightly more powerful processor and Mini LED display. But it has a thicker body, a more aggressive design and an unusual keyboard layout. And also the slightly more expensive HP Omen 17, which has a 17.3-inch screen and a larger drive. But, like the Scar 16, it has a slightly strange keyboard layout.

6 reasons to buy Lenovo Legion Pro 7:

• Excellent performance, which is enough for all modern games
• Efficient cooling system
• Gorgeous 16-inch IPS screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz
• Stylish metal case
• Comfortable keyboard
• Many connectors

2 reasons not to buy Lenovo Legion Pro 7:

• No fingerprint scanner, IR camera, or card reader
• You need a laptop with more battery life

Quick Start:

1. What's in the box?
2. What's the Lenovo Legion Pro 7's look and feel?
3. How comfortable is the Lenovo Legion Pro 7?
4. How good is the screen?
5. What about performance and battery life?
6. In dry balance

What's in the box?

Lenovo Legion Pro 7 comes in a large black box with glossy Legion lettering. The package is almost standard. The laptop itself, a 330W power supply, a power cable, documentation, and a small box with accessories. As it turned out, inside there are four replaceable white ceramic WASD keycaps, additional switches, and a replacement tool.

What about the appearance and construction of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7?

The vast majority of Lenovo Legion laptops have a rather stylish and restrained design. If you switch off the RGB backlight, it looks more like an expensive workstation. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7 has a clear rectangular shape, the top and bottom covers are metal, and the working surface is made of high-quality and fairly durable plastic. The body is very dark grey, almost black with a matte surface. It is pleasant to the touch and looks good, but fingerprints remain on it. The design is familiar to the Legion line. So the display unit is not attached to the back of the laptop, but on top of the topcase, a little closer to the user with two hinges. The top lid is decorated with a small Lenovo logo in the lower right corner and the Legion inscription in the upper left. There is no backlight on the lid.

There are a lot of large hexagonal vents on the edges. This is quite normal for a powerful gaming model. There are also a lot of connectors, they are located on the sides and at the back. On the left are USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with DisplayPort 1.4 support and 140W Power Delivery. With the right power supply, you can use the laptop for office work without having to carry around a large 330W power supply. But, of course, the laptop will not work at full capacity.

On the opposite side, there is a 3.5mm audio jack, an electronic webcam shutter switch, and another USB-A 3.2 Gen 1.

On the back there is a full-fledged gigabit network Ethernet (RJ-45), another USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (DisplayPort 1.4, Power Delivery 140W), HDMI 2.1, 2xUSB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (one of them with support for charging gadgets when the laptop is turned off) and a proprietary power supply connector. All in all, a very good set that lacks a card reader. It would be appropriate for those who work with photos/videos.

The entire width of the front edge of the laptop is covered by a six-zone RGB backlight that can be adjusted to your liking, synchronised with the keyboard, or simply turned off.

The bezels on the top and sides of the display are thin. The webcam with an indicator and two microphones is located in its usual place on a small ledge, which is convenient for opening the laptop.

There are many ventilation holes on the bottom and wide rubber feet for good fixation on the table. The speakers are placed on bevelled surfaces at an angle, which should improve the sound a little. The bottom cover is fixed with ten screws. The user has access to two SO-DIMM slots (in our case, they are occupied by two 16 GB strips), two M.2 slots for USB drives, and a network adapter. So the upgrade options are very good.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7 is well assembled from quality materials, the panels hardly bend. It's hard to call the laptop a giant: 363.4x262.1x25.9 mm, but the weight of 2.8 kg is not very comfortable for daily transport. But this laptop is still positioned more as a desktop replacement, so it's quite normal.

How comfortable is the Lenovo Legion Pro 7?

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7 display unit is fixed with two hinges that allow you to open the laptop 180°. The lid can be lifted with one hand and is well fixed in the desired position.

The keyboard occupies almost the entire width of the working surface and has a standard layout with an additional number pad. The only peculiarity of the layout is the reduced size of the function buttons, which ends with the multimedia control buttons. The arrow block is full-sized and slightly shifted closer to the user. Both Shift keys are long. So there are almost no unusual moments and it takes a minimum of time to get used to. The power button with a built-in LED is located above the keyboard unit. For some reason, Lenovo decided to completely abandon biometric methods of unlocking the laptop in the Legion Pro 7. There is no fingerprint sensor or infrared camera.

The buttons have a full 1.5 mm stroke, they are pressed pleasantly and informatively. The keyboard has RGB backlighting with a variety of effects and the possibility of individual settings for each button.

Optionally, the keycaps on the WASD buttons can be replaced with additional white ones with a ceramic-like coating. The kit includes the necessary tools and 8 additional switches.

The touchpad, although not glass, has a good coating and sensitivity. It is quite enough when working with documents, browsing and other simple tasks.

How good is the screen?

Lenovo Legion Pro 7 is equipped with an IPS display with a resolution of 2560x1600. The aspect ratio is 16:10, which has been increasingly used in laptops lately. The maximum refresh rate is 240 Hz, and the pixel response time is 4 ms. Lenovo claims that the display has a maximum brightness of 500 cd/m², a static contrast ratio of 1200:1 and 100% sRGB colour gamut. Dolby Vision, HDR 400 and G-Sync frame rate synchronisation are supported. The screen is really of very good quality. It has maximum viewing angles with minimal contrast reduction, pleasant colours and an effective anti-reflective coating. Hardware measurements showed that the brightness and contrast values are close to the declared values. The maximum brightness was 480.243 cd/m², the black field brightness was 0.452 cd/m², and the static contrast was 1062:1. Colour gamut is almost identical to sRGB, and colour accuracy is close to reference values.

What about performance and battery life?

Inside, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7 has some of the most powerful components found in a modern flagship gaming laptop. The processor is a 24-core Intel Core i9-13900HX monster. This 13th-generation Raptor Lake processor, manufactured using the Intel 7 process, includes 8 high-performance cores with a frequency of 2.2 to 5.4 GHz and 16 energy-efficient cores of 1.6-3.9 GHz. It supports up to 32 threads, with a third-level cache of 32 MB. The TDP level is 55 W with a possible short-term increase to 157 W. In the case of Lenovo Legion Pro 7, under heavy loads, the power can reach approximately 135W. The built-in Intel UHD Graphics has 32 processing units and a frequency of up to 1.65 GHz. The discrete graphics card is the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop with 150W TGP plus 25W Dynamic Boost. The standard frequency is 1455 MHz, and the Boost frequency is 1605 MHz. The amount of video memory is 16 GB GDDR6. There is a MUX Switch multiplexer that allows you to switch a discrete video adapter directly to the display, rather than through an integrated card, which requires a reboot when activated. It also supports NVIDIA Advanced Optimus technology, which works in hybrid performance mode (enabled in the Lenovo Vantage app), automatically switches between graphics adapters and does not require a reboot. The amount of RAM is 32 GB DDR5-5600 MHz. Two 16 GB strips are used, they are not soldered, so an upgrade is possible. The wireless adapter is Killer AX1675i with support for Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) (Dual band) 2x2 and Bluetooth 5.1. There is also gigabit Ethernet for a wired connection. Lenovo also mentions the use of the LA-2Q AI chip for machine learning in the laptop. It is claimed that thanks to sensors on the laptop components and Smart Engine technology, the laptop optimises performance in real time. And, thanks to the aforementioned machine learning, it does it even better over time. There are no practical ways to verify this, so you'll just have to take Lenovo's word for it.

The results in synthetic performance tests are impressive. In both processor and graphics tests, the laptop demonstrates extremely high performance, comparable to a powerful modern gaming desktop. Therefore, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7 has enough power for all the most demanding games and demanding work tasks (3D modelling, game engines, etc.) and has enough to last for years to come.

The Legion Coldfront 5.0 system, which includes two fans, is responsible for cooling the components. Under prolonged maximum loads in the AIDA64 stress test, the temperature can fluctuate between 75-85°, the processor hardly ever throttles, and the laptop operates stably. There is noise at maximum loads, but this is far from the loudest gaming laptop we've ever reviewed. The cooling system does not shout over the built-in speakers. The keyboard stays cool, only the area above it gets a little warm.

The drive is a fast SSD Samsung PM9A1  M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 with a capacity of 1 TB. The laptop has another M.2 slot for an additional SSD.

The maximum read speed was about 6700 MB/s, and the write speed was about 4950 MB/s.

All modern games run perfectly on maximum graphics settings. You can almost always expect at least 60 FPS. Cyberpunk 2077 with the latest patch, all possible ray tracing settings (including path tracing), and DLSS in auto mode runs at 55-60 FPS.

If you enable DLSS frame generation, the figure increases to 85-95 FPS:

Callisto Protocol. Maximum settings with ray tracing: 93-112 FPS

The Ascent. Maximum settings with Ray Tracing, without DLSS. 65-80 FPS.

Baldur's Gate 3. Ultra settings, DLSS and FSR are disabled. 137-164 FPS:

Starfield. Maximum settings, FSR2 scaling. 60-80 FPS in open locations, 100+ in closed locations:

God of War. Maximum settings, no DLSS or FSR. Stable 120 FPS (limited to the game):

Lords of the Fallen. 115-155 FPS:

The laptop's audio system includes two 2W speakers. It is claimed that they were tuned by Harman. In general, these are very good speakers with a good volume margin, but no more. They are enough for videos, movies and games, but music lovers will have to connect something more serious to listen to music.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7 has a large four-cell 99.9 Wh battery. The laptop supports fast charging: 80% in 30 minutes, full charge in about an hour. Such powerful laptops never have long battery life. The situation has not changed in the case of Lenovo Legion Pro 7. The manufacturer promises 4.4 hours of operation. During office use (browser, documents) with 50% brightness, the laptop lasted approximately 3.5 hours.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7 can be supplied with or without a preinstalled operating system (and proprietary software). The configuration under review comes without an OS, so you'll have to install everything yourself. The Lenovo Vantage app is the most important software to install. It has a standard set of functions: system updates, diagnostics, keyboard backlighting, macro recording, webcam and microphone operation, charging modes, etc. But there are also a number of interesting and important features. There is a way to switch video card modes and overclock it. There is also a very functional section for detailed system performance settings, including temperature limits, power for the CPU and GPU. There's also a custom mode for the cooling system with intensity settings depending on the load. It has a certain "fool-proof" feature: the intensity cannot be lowered below a certain level, which is necessary to ensure the normal functioning of the system.

The laptop also supports Tobii tracking technology. It works in some games, and is also capable of automatically dimming the image or locking the laptop when the owner leaves, monitoring the time spent on the laptop, tracking the distance from the eyes to the screen, etc.:

Four things you need to know about Lenovo Legion Pro 7.

• Lenovo Legion Pro 7 - has a powerful 13th generation 24-core Intel Core i9 processor and GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop.
• The laptop is equipped with a high-quality 16-inch 2560×1600 IPS screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz.
• It has a metal body and RGB half-backlight.
• Not suitable for working away from the outlet.

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